Ib. dewberries, the fruit of the dewberry bush or blue bramble, of which the botanical name is Rubus caesius. None of these fruits of course are ripe when the action of the play is supposed to take place, and the same remark applies to them as to the flowers in ii. 2. 250.

Com

156. the fiery glow-worm's eyes. Johnson thought that Shakespeare's observation was at fault, whereas he only uses the license of a poet. pare Herrick's Night-piece, to Julia (Hesperides, ii. 7, ed. 1846):

'Her Eyes the Glow-worme lend thee.'

157. To have my love to bed and to arise, to conduct him to his bed and to attend him when he rises. Compare Comedy of Errors, ii. 2. 10:

Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?'

And Taming of the Shrew, Ind. 2. 39:

'Or wilt thou sleep? we'll have thee to a couch.'

See also 2 Kings xi. 15: 'Have her forth without the ranges.'

161-164. The distribution of these speeches among the four fairies was made by Capell. The quartos and folios make but three speakers, giving 'Haile, mortall, haile' to the first.

165, &c. With this conversation of Bottom with the fairies Malone compares Lyly's Maydes Metamorphosis, in which there is a dialogue between some foresters and a troop of fairies:

Mopso. I pray, Sir, what might I call you?

1 Fai. My name is Penny.

Mop. I am sorry I cannot purse you.

Frisco. I pray you, Sir, what might I call you? 2 Fai. My name is Cricket.

Fris. I would I were a chimney for your sake.'

168. I shall desire you of more acquaintance. The same construction is found in The Merchant of Venice, iv. 1. 402:

'I humbly do desire your grace of pardon.'

And in As You Like It, v. 4. 56: 'I desire you of the like.' Again in Chapman's An Humerous Dayes Mirth (Works, i. 55): 'I do desire you of more acquaintance.'

169. if I cut my finger, a cobweb being sometimes used to stanch blood. 172. Squash, an unripe peascod. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5. 16: 'Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 'tis a peascod.'

177. your patience, your endurance, what you have endured. There is no necessity to alter this, with Hanmer, to your parentage,' or with Farmer to your passions'; and Mason's 'I know you passing well' is feeble. Reed supposes the words to be spoken ironically, because mustard was thought to excite to anger. But what follows shows that they are used in their natural sense. The house of Mustard had endured much oppression from the giant Ox-beef.

179. I promise you. See 1. 26.

So the third and fourth folios.

180, 181. your more acquaintance. The other early copies read 'you more,' and Porson conjectured 'you of more' as above, which was adopted by Dyce in his second edition.

186. love's. Pope's correction. The quartos and folios read lovers,' which Malone contended was the true reading and to be pronounced as a monosyllable, as in Twelfth Night, ii. 4. 66:

'Sad true lover never find my grave.' Steevens however maintained that here also 'true love.'

true lover' was a mistake for

Scene II.

3. in extremity, in the highest degree, to the utmost, excessively. 5. night-rule, night-order, revelry, or diversion. 'Rule' is used in the sense of conduct in Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 132: Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady's favour at anything more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule.'

7. close, secret, private, retired.

So 2 Henry VI, ii. 2. 3:

'Give me leave

In this close walk to satisfy myself.'

9. patches, fools, foolish fellows; used as a familiarly contemptuous term, as in The Merchant of Venice, ii. 5. 46, Shylock says of Launcelot:

6

The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder.'

It is probably derived from the Italian pazzo. See note on The Tempest, iii. 2. 63 (Clar. Press ed.). Patch was the name of Cardinal Wolsey's fool, whom he sent as a present to the king.

Ib. mechanicals, mechanics, artisans. Compare 2 Henry VI, i. 3. 196: 'Base dunghill villain and mechanical.'

13. thick-skin. So in Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5. 2: What wouldst thou have, boor? what, thickskin?'

Ib. barren, witless, stupid. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5. 90: I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal: I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone.' And Hamlet, iii. 2. 46: For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.'

Ib. sort, company, crew. See Richard II, iv. 1. 246:

And yet salt water blinds them not so much,

But they can see a sort of traitors here.'

And 2 Henry VI, iii. 2. 277:

The lord ambassador

Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king.'

14. Who Pyramus presented, played the part of Pyramus. See iii. 1. 60.

15. enter'd in. In Shakespeare's time 'enter' was followed either by 'in' or 'into.' See iii. 1. 77, and Hamlet, iii. 4. 95:

These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears.'

Richard II, ii. 3. 160:

Unless you please to enter in the castle.'

17. nole, a grotesque word for head, like pate, noddle. The A. S. hnoll, knoll, the top of anything, is the same word. In the Wicliffite versions of Genesis xlix. 8, where the earlier has 'thin hondis in the skulles of thin enemyes,' the later has thin hondis schulen be in the nollis of thin enemyes'; the Latin being cervicibus. Probably nole,' like 'noddle,' was the back part of the head and so included the neck. Cotgrave has 'Occipital . . . belonging to the noddle; or hinder part of the head.' The following receipt is given in an English translation of Albertus Magnus de Secretis Naturae, printed at London by William Copland: If thou wilt that a mans head seeme an Asse head. Take vp of the couering of an Asse, & annoint the man on his head.' Much more elaborate directions are given in Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, xiii. 19 (ed. 1584), quoted by Douce: 'Cutt off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead) otherwise the vertue or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make an earthen vessell of fit capacitie to conteine the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat therof; couer it close, and dawbe it over with lome: let it boile over a soft fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the bare bones may be seene: beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and annoint the heades of the standers by, and they shall seeme to haue horsses or asses heads.' A trick of this kind is attributed to that notable conjurer Dr. Faustus, whose history (c. 43) is referred to by Steevens and is printed in Thoms' Early English Prose Romances.

19. mimic, actor, player. The first quarto has Minnick,' the second 'Minnock,' which Johnson thought the right reading. But both are corruptions, the latter of the former, and the former of 'mimick.' Malone quotes from Decker's Guls Hornebooke (1609): 'Draw what troop you can from the stage after you; the mimicks are beholden to you for allowing them elbow room.' See also Herrick, The Wake (ii. 63): 'Morris-dancers thou shalt see,

Marian too in Pagentrie:

And a Mimick to devise

Many grinning properties.'

20. eye, see; as below, 1. 40, and Coriolanus, ii. 1. 226: Clambering the walls to eye him.'

Ib. in sort, in company. See 1. 18.

21. russel-patted. I have not hesitated to adopt Mr. Bennett's suggestion (Zoological Journal, v. 496), communicated to me by Professor Newton, to substitute russet-patted,' or red-legged (Fr. à pattes rousses), for the old

reading russet-pated,' which is untrue as a description of the chough, for it has a russet coloured bill and feet but a perfectly black head.

25. at our stamp, at hearing the footsteps of the fairies, which were powerful enough to rock the ground': see iv. 1. 85. Theobald proposed

to read at our stump,' and Johnson actually substituted at a stump,' quoting from Drayton's Nymphidia [ed. 1631, p. 184]:

A stump doth trip him in his pace,

Downe comes poore Hob vpon his face,
And lamentably tore his case,

Amongst the Bryers and brambles.'

26. He, used indefinitely for one,' as in Sonnet xxix. 6: 'Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd.'

And The Merchant of Venice, iv. I. 54, 55:

36. latch'd. In the other passages where latch' is used by Shakespeare

it has the sense

iv. 3. 196:

of catch,' from A. S. læccan, or gelæccan. See Macbeth,

But I have words

That would be howl'd out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch them.'

And Sonnet cxiii. 6, of the eye:

" For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch.'

6

Compare also Holland's Pliny, viii. 24, of the Ichneumon: 'In fight he sets up his taile, & whips about, turning his taile to the enemie, & therin latcheth and receiveth all the strokes of the Aspis, and taketh no harme thereby.' In the present passage latch'd' must signify caught and held fast as by a charm or spell, like the disciples going to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 16): 'their eyes were holden, that they should not know him.' Hanmer interprets it as lick'd over,' that is, smeared, anointed, from Fr. lécher, but there appears to be no evidence for this meaning. On the other hand a 'latchpan' in Suffolk and Norfolk is a dripping-pan, which catches the dripping from the meat; and Bailey gives 'latching' in the sense of catching, infectious; as it is still used in the North of England. With this compere 'taking' in King Lear, ii. 4. 166:

'Strike her young bones

You taking airs, with lameness!'

40. of force, of necessity. Compare Julius Cæsar, iv. 3. 203: 'Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.'

I

41. close, so as to be unobserved. See above, 1. 7, and Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 110: 'Stand thee close then under this penthouse.'

48. Being o'er shoes in blood. Steevens compares Macbeth, iii. 4. 136-138: 'I am in blood

Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.'

Coleridge conjectured 'plunge in knee deep,' which Phelps adopted. The phrase 'over shoes' in the sense of moderately deep occurs in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. I. 24:

Pro. That's a deep story of a deeper love:

For he was more than over shoes in love.
Val. 'Tis true; for you are over boots in love,
And yet you never swum the Hellespont.'

50. so true unto the day. Compare Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2. 185: 'As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

As sun to day, as turtle to her mate.'

Whole as the

'I had else been perfect, marble, founded as the rock,'

57. so dead, so death-like. See 2 Henry IV, i. I. 71:
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.'

58. murder'd.

folios murderer.'

The quartos have 'murthered' and 'murdered,' the

62. What's this to my Lysander? what has this to do with him?

68. once, for once. So in The Tempest, iii. 2. 24: Moon-calf, speak

once in thy life, if thou beest a good moon-calf.'

Ib. tell true, speak truth. So in All's Well that Ends Well, i. 3. 225: 'Count. Wherefore? tell true.

Hel. I will tell truth.'

And Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 1. 18:

'Here, good my glass, take this for telling true.'

So also say true? in Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 213; ‘speak true,' The Tempest, iii. 1. 70.

70. brave touch, fine stroke, heroic exploit.

71. a worm, a serpent. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 243:

'Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus therę,

That kills and pains not?'

72. doubler tongue. See ii. 2. 9.